you think the Ryans need some professional help, like family therapy?’
‘What they need is for that cunt Stride to step in front of a bus,’ he said.
She couldn’t remember hearing Ben use the c-word before: of the two of them she was by far the more prolific swearer. As her gaze scanned his face, she thought: Maybe it’s you who needs the therapist.
‘I know you got close to Jamie, to all of them,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘I’d have done exactly the same, a case like that. But shouldn’t you be thinking about handing over to family liaison by now?’
‘What, now the case is dead in the water, it’s time to dump the family and move on?’
Ben’s voice sounded reasonable, but she saw that his top lip had thinned to a line – the only outward sign of anger he ever betrayed. Tread carefully, my girl, she heard her dad say.
‘No, of course not. It’s just … you know the score; if you go bush over a case like that’ – she shrugged – ‘you’re gonna be less focused on catching the next evil scumbag – the one we can put away.’
Rocking his head back against the wall, he exhaled air through pursed lips, reminding Kershaw of the escape valve on a pressure cooker.
‘I know, I know. You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m not even sure seeing me does him any good – I’m only gonna remind him of what happened, aren’t I? I probably should back off a bit.’
‘I think that’s very sensible.’
He grinned, any trace of anger gone. ‘Before you report for duty, Constable, stick me on a couple of bits of toast, would you?’
Kershaw managed to smile back, but an undercurrent of disquiet tugged at her still. She had no problem dealing with conflict – to her, it was part and parcel of a relationship – but she got the feeling that Ben would sometimes simply pretend to roll over to avoid confrontation.
It came to her that maybe the misgivings she’d been having weren’t exactly to do with Ben being too nice, but with his apparent difficulty in being nasty. She was no psychotherapist, but she knew that would need to change when they lived together.
The wooden shutter gave a single mournful squeak as it was pulled back from the wire grille.
‘I present myself before the Holy Confession, for I have offended God,’ murmured Janusz.
‘Have I heard your confession before, my son?’ asked the priest.
Janusz peered through the grille for a beat, before realising that Father Pietruski was winding him up.
‘It’s been –’ a surreptitious count of his fingers ‘– a long time since my last confession.’
‘I was thinking you must have run away with the gypsies,’ said Pietruski, bone-dry. ‘Or perhaps even gone home to honour your marriage vows to that wife of yours, not to mention your parental duties.’
Janusz shifted in his seat. Pietruski had been his priest for more than twenty years now, and it seemed he would always have this ability to make him feel like a wayward teenager.
‘You know that Marta and I got divorced,’ he said reasonably. The priest started to speak, but Janusz broke in. ‘Yes, Father, I know the Church doesn’t recognise divorce, but that’s the reality in our hearts.’
Janusz had been just nineteen when he and Marta had wed. The ceremony took place in a fog of grief and wodka, just weeks after the death of his girlfriend Iza, and the marriage had proved to be a cataclysmic mistake. It had, however, produced one outcome for which he felt not a trace of regret. Years after they’d split up, during a single, ill-advised, night of reunion, they had created a child together.
Things had improved between Janusz and his ex-wife over the last year or so, and although he liked to think the thaw in their relations was due to his efforts to be a better father to their fourteen-year-old son Bobek, he half suspected that it had more to do with Marta’s new boyfriend, six or seven years her junior, who she’d met at art evening classes. On the phone to Lublin, where she and the boy now lived, he had heard her laugh in a way she hadn’t done for years – and was glad of her newfound happiness.
‘As for Bobek, I’m a passably good father these days,’ he continued. ‘I flew over to see him only last month and we speak on the phone several times a week.’
‘I see,’ said the priest. ‘So, aside from your personal decision to ignore the unbreakable sacrament of your marriage, are there any other sins you wish to report?’
Janusz thought for a moment. ‘Coveting another man’s wife,’ he said, visualising Kasia, blonde hair tumbling over naked shoulders.
‘Only coveting?’
‘It’s all I’ve had to make do with in the last few weeks.’
‘Anything else?’ Pietruski’s tone had become even more acid.
Janusz hesitated. ‘Murderous impulses,’ he said, his voice a low rumble.
‘Against whom?’
‘Against the skurwiele who killed a friend of mine, Jim Fulford.’
That made Father Pietruski pause and squint through the grille. ‘What a dreadful thing. I will pray for you – and your friend, God rest his soul.’
Both men crossed themselves. ‘But you must leave it to the authorities to pursue the wrongdoers,’ said the priest. ‘You are not God: it is not given to you to look into a man’s soul, to decide how to punish the guilty.’
Janusz’s grunt was non-committal.
‘We’ve spoken before about this anger of yours, my son. And how in the end these negative emotions can hurt only yourself.’
‘Yes, Father,’ said Janusz. But he was irritated by his confessor’s recent tendency to couch things this way. He came here for the implacable wisdom of a 2000-year-old Church, not a serving of New Age psychobabble.
‘Is that everything?’ asked Pietruski.
Janusz opened his mouth, on the verge of admitting his plans to get inside Scarface’s apartment later that day, before remembering that it wasn’t the done thing to confess sins in advance. A wise man had once said: Better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.
‘Yes, Father, that’s it.’
Janusz lingered in St Stanislaus longer than was strictly necessary even to perform the elaborate menu of penances Father Pietruski had seen fit to give him. Wrapped in its cavernous quiet amid the smell of snuffed candles and incense, he allowed himself a few moments to grieve for Jim, but resisted the urge to pray for him. That might undermine his resolve. Vengeance first, prayers later, he told himself.
Finding out Barbu Romescu’s address from Wiktor, his DVLA
